Libya: Seriously, where is this going?

[illram]

Once again I am regrettably not surprised.

 

[Elephantium]

Except the dissidents, they will be killed, of course, but discretely so noone needs to be upset.

One at a time?

 

[Tani Coyote]

Nah, this is already a huge victory for the US. First, the country has been devastated by fighting, which is a huge setback for all the pro-democracy movements in the mideast. People will be afraid to revolt for democracy for fear of a Libya style civil war. This has been a long and bloody war, with western forces helping the rebels just enough to keep them going, but not enough to actually win the war for them. The end result will most likely be a split country, with Ghaddafi or one of his generals in control of the west, and a pro-western dictator in control of the east where most of the oil deposits are.

Democracy crushed, and oil reserves taken away from an anti-western dictator and given to a pro-western dictator. The US generals Couldn't ask for a better result than that.

Well, for people wanting a Pax Americana, this is indeed a victory.

Not so much if you want a liberal democratic world.

The Seven weeks war was pretty quick...

His point was that all wars are proposed as ending quick, not that they can't.

This is one on the long list of "quick" wars that actually became drawn out.

Or perhaps due to domestic factors (that Obama was getting pressured to do something).

This would be genius because:

-If Obama doesn't go in, he's weak on defense/encouraging instability/etc.
-If Obama does go in, claim he's ballooning our spending/pouring money into a war we cannot win/etc.

 

[Joecoolyo]

Anyway, the French Foreign Ministry said that Gaddafi contacted them telling them that he is willing to go. Here's the BBC article.
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-africa-14127804

But there doesn't seem to be any more development on that. It was several days ago.

I'm pretty sure he's as willing to go as he was willing to actually cease fire a couple months ago.

 

[innonimatu]

The basic problem with the Ghaddafi regime it that it never really profitted anyone in Libya except Ghaddafi and his immediate circle.

Wait, was or was not Libya one of Africa's most developed countries prior to this war? If it wasn't I'd like to know when the story changed, and how.

The Seven weeks war was pretty quick...

Anyway, the French Foreign Ministry said that Gaddafi contacted them telling them that he is willing to go. Here's the BBC article.
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-africa-14127804

But there doesn't seem to be any more development on that. It was several days ago.

It's just a continuation of the pattern started with the news piece stating that he had run away to Venezuela. Psycological warfare, and it worked in the first few days when plenty of higher-ups deserted, sure that the winds had shifted and eager to cozy up with the bnew power. Now.. it's sounding like Baghdad Bob, NATO version.

Funny how all news pieces about his imminent departure have been shown false, and still new ones keep being published. Either the journalists are incredibly foolish, or very servile to whatever source is feeding them those.

 

[Verbose]

Wait, was or was not Libya one of Africa's most developed countries prior to this war? If it wasn't I'd like to know when the story changed, and how.

He turned the country into a joke, and Libyans noticed, despite the governments best efforts to make sure Libyans didn't learn foreign language, so they wouldn't get so many ideas...

This has been one of the more bizarre dictatures in the world for rather a long time. The Libyans noticed...

 

[Ayatollah So]

The thread title should be changed to "Libya - where are we going, and why are we in this handbasket?"

 

[innonimatu]

And once again the talk about the imminent surrender of the libyan government proved to be the stuff of Baghdad Bobs stuck with a war going wrong. Anyway, some updates on the ongoing humanitarian bombing and civil war in Libya:

Libya: UN mission to Tripoli finds areas in urgent need of humanitarian aid

25 July 2011
United Nations humanitarian agencies said today that they have identified areas of the Libyan capital, Tripoli, where residents urgently need humanitarian assistance, including medical treatment for injuries caused by the ongoing conflict in the North African country.

“Although the mission observed aspects of normalcy in Tripoli, members identified pockets of vulnerability where people need urgent humanitarian assistance,” said the acting UN Humanitarian Coordinator for Libya, Laurence Hart, in a press release following the conclusion of the mission on Saturday.

The assessment mission, the fourth to Tripoli since the beginning of the crisis, was intended to further look into the needs of internally displaced persons (IDPs) and other vulnerable groups, and to ensure that they received assistance. The mission also assessed the humanitarian impact of the conflict on civilians.

The health sector is under strain, having lost thousands of foreign workers at the beginning of the conflict, according to the press release issued by the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA). Medical supplies, including vaccines, are rapidly running low, and the mission received reports of heavy psychosocial impact of the conflict, mainly on children and women.

Although basic food items are available in the markets, prices are rising and there are concerns over the sustainability of supplies into the city especially as the holy month of Ramadan approaches, if the conflict persists.

Outside Tripoli, the team also visited Al-Khoms and Zletan, east of Tripoli and close to the frontline, as well as Gharyan, in the Western Mountains area. All those towns have seen a significant influx of IDPs.

Fuel shortages have become a pressing problem, and the UN team observed long queues at gas stations, some of which had closed down. A fuel consumption quota system is now in place since, and Libyan oil trade experts warned that fuel stocks could run out in two weeks. Public transport costs have tripled, making access to services, including hospitals, challenging.

Paradise until the war': foreign medics tell of the Libya they lost

By Portia Walker in Nalut, Libya
Tuesday, 26 July 2011

In a hospital high in Libya's western mountains, doctors and nurses on their day off are clustered around a row of computers, speaking in Ukrainian, Korean and Bengali.

They came to Libya for the higher salaries and better life to be had in this oil-rich Arab state – but now they are trapped, their wages unpaid and Gaddafi's forces surrounding the road that leads to the safety of Tunisia in the east.

"It was a paradise until the war," sighed Tamara, one of the nurses working at the hospital in Nalut, in her dilapidated bungalow in the rows of staff accommodation in the hospital grounds. She came to Libya eight years ago from Transnistria, a quasi-state within Ukraine and one of the poorest places in Europe. She was happy here until rockets started falling, and the fear drove her 60-year-old husband mad.

Now she wants to leave but has not been paid since March and cannot go until she gets her wages, which were stopped when rebels took over the town early on in the Libyan revolution.

Inside the hospital, two Bangladeshi nurses stationed in the cavernous underground wards opened after the shelling began, told the same story. "They did not give us salaries for four months," said Shahanari Yasmin who arrived a year ago, lured by an advertisement in a Dhaka newspaper. She left a 12-year-old daughter and a nine-year-old son at home and now is unable to send them money.

Her colleague, Elizabeth, also from Dhaka, said that her mother is pleading with her to return home but she does not want to leave until she's been paid. "My father, my mother, everyone is sick. They need lots of medicine and I can't send them money to buy it."

Like all of the medical staff here, she sleeps in a bunker deep under the hospital, a measure taken after a rocket hit the hospital grounds a fortnight ago. "I'm too much afraid, heavy bombing," she said. "it's a very bad situation now".

Joyce, a 42-year-old nurse from the Philippines, is also fearful but does not want to risk travelling on the road to the border while it is still being shelled. "The fear is still with me," she said. "Gaddafi's forces are 10km from the border, any time they will attack."

Pushing a trolley of supplies down one of the hospital's subterranean corridors was Wilhelm Edgar Camer, a doctor from Bavaria, who is working with a British NGO helping at the hospital. He said that the work of the foreign medical staff was essential to keeping the hospital here open. "There are not sufficient Libyan doctors," he said. "At this hospital about 50 per cent are contracted from abroad, the mid to high-level staff are mostly foreign. Without them the hospital couldn't continue."

Hospital staff said that doctors and nurses working there came from North Korea, Ukraine, Bulgaria, Bangladesh and the Philippines. North Korean doctors paced around the wards and offices but refused to be interviewed.

The residents of most of the towns in Libya's remote western mountains fled to Tunisia or Tripoli when fighting first broke out in February. The patients at the hospital were mainly wounded fighters or civilian casualties of the nightly rocket attacks on this small Berber town. The staff treat both rebel fighters and the wounded Gaddafi soldiers they bring in.

They have little choice. "There are no staff anymore, all the Libyan nurses, they went to Tunisia", added Joyce as she prepared a trolley with drugs for wounded fighters. "If no foreigners stayed here, who will help them?"

The present strategy of NATO, as I had remarked, is to starve the government-help portion of Libya into submission, make their lives so miserable that they'll surrender and deliver Qaddafi. IF it doesn't work soon, there's always "Shock and Awe" left to try. Or are they already playing that card also?

Libya's Zlitan becoming a front-line city

Libyan fire fighters survey the remains of a food storage building damaged during a NATO airstrike in Zlitan, Libya, on July 25.

Zlitan, Libya (CNN) -- Firefighters battled a blaze caused by NATO airstrikes at a food-storage complex Monday in Zlitan, increasingly a front-line city in the conflict between Libyan government troops and rebels fighting to oust longtime ruler Moammar Gadhafi.

The firefighters doused burning sacks of flour with water after bombs punctured the high roofs of three facilities packed with flour, rice and cooking oil in Zlitan, on the Libyan coast east of Tripoli. An unexploded bomb lay buried in the concrete floor of one of the buildings, beneath a hole in the ceiling where sunlight streamed through.

Zlitan is about 40 kilometers (25 miles) west of the opposition-held port city of Misrata, and the front line between the rebels and pro-regime forces is somewhere in between the two cities. Smoke rising on the horizon and the rumble of artillery in the east suggested that by Monday, the fighting had moved closer to the city limits.

"It's continuous bombing, morning day and night," said Fathi Amar, who who stood armed with a radio and camouflage uniform at the entrance to the burning storage center.

Are there still any fools here who believe in "humanitarian bombings"?

Libya is going to be destroyed. That much has always been clear since the civil war began: the libyans would be screwed. Whatever the political outcome the country will be reduced to a poor, indebted, third-country hellhole doing its job of supplying resources and nothing more. In that way NATO will be successful no matter what.

 

[Winner]

Protracting this conflict is a crime against humanity.

NATO should have invaded - with land forces - months ago. Get in, occupy Tripoli and environs, arrest Gaddafi, let the rebels enter the city and seize governmental power, stay for a month or two to ensure no reprisal massacres occur, and then get out.

Instead, we're supporting the rebels who are clearly absolutely disorganized and incapable of taking down the regime without protracted trench warfare and town sieges which only contribute to the destruction of the country's infrastructure and suffering of the civilian population.

Way to go, NATO. I thought that what they did in Serbia 1999 was a total lunacy, but now they're outdoing themselves.

 

[Thoughtful Thug]

Protracting this conflict is a crime against humanity.

NATO should have invaded - with land forces - months ago. Get in, occupy Tripoli and environs, arrest Gaddafi, let the rebels enter the city and seize governmental power, stay for a month or two to ensure no reprisal massacres occur, and then get out.

Instead, we're supporting the rebels who are clearly absolutely disorganized and incapable of taking down the regime without protracted trench warfare and town sieges which only contribute to the destruction of the country's infrastructure and suffering of the civilian population.

Way to go, NATO. I thought that what they did in Serbia 1999 was a total lunacy, but now they're outdoing themselves.

Some member of NATO are pulling out from the adventure in Libya and Afganistan. Norway is one of them. I think somewhere in August. Kinda of a strange coincidence that this terrorist act by this Anders guy has occurred slightly after that announcement.

 

[Winner]

I don't think it's related. Hm, if the attack had been the work of Islamic terrorists, our resident Europe-bashers would probably accuse Norway of cutting and running, just as they accused Spain after the Madrid blasts.

 

[Thoughtful Thug]

I don't think it's related. Hm, if the attack has been the work of Islamic terrorists, our resident Europe-bashers would probably accuse Norway of cutting and running, just as they accused Spain after the Madrid blasts.

I wouldn't say it is related. But the timing is quite odd.

But it is more of a deeper issue of the decrease of military funding on the behalf of many European member states within NATO, and the political will to continue to invest a sufficient amount of money to defense. Especially all that problem of austerity issues that they all are having trouble dealing among themselves.

 

[onedreamer]

This has dragged on far longer than expected and is no closer to any sort of resolution than when the west attacked. Where is this going to end?

I, and perhaps you too, can only blame ourselves for believing this was "different". There were many people warning how it would end, like all other wars of this kind. Well, to put it shortly, it is now evident that they were right. How will it end I can't tell, but a country with 6 million inhabitants in total can't last much longer into such a civil war. It may even end in 2 countries...

 

[onedreamer]

It's a lose-lose situation for the U.S. Let's look at the two possible outcomes.

Gaddafi wins: Does Gaddafi go back to supporting terrorism in the West as payback for the bombing of Libya? I'm not as worried about Gaddafi trying to manipulate oil prices because he can happily sell the oil to China or South Africa and cutting production would hurt Libya when its most vulnerable.

Rebels win: Now we've got an unstable state with only limited loyalty to the U.S. or any European government. Will they be able to effectively govern the country? Will U.S. commercial interests be acknowledged? Will Libya be able to prevent al-Qaeda from operating in the country? How much U.S. aid is going to be necessary to prop up their government?

It's not going to end well. Unsurprisingly, the best option would have been to stay out of it and treat it as a purely internal affair. I know we certainly wouldn't want Libya's "help" in some state of trouble here in the West.

I'm sorry to completely disagree with you but I have a much simpler view than you do and most probably the people at White House and Pentagon do also.

1) Gheddafi wins. It's a draw not a loss, since this was the starting situation. The USA will not have gained or lost anything in their foreign politics. Gheddafi never stopped supporting terrorism, come on...
2) Rebels win: limited loyalty is better than no loyalty in my book. Al Qaeda? ROFLAMO. Look at your debt, not Al Qaeda. Your political leaders indebted the USA (and not only) -but filled their pockets I'm sure- for this crazy witch hunt. Stop it already with this myth of Al Qaeda being the Devil and cause of all pains in the world.

 

[Camikaze]

I, and perhaps you too, can only blame ourselves for believing this was "different". There were many people warning how it would end, like all other wars of this kind. Well, to put it shortly, it is now evident that they were right. How will it end I can't tell, but a country with 6 million inhabitants in total can't last much longer into such a civil war. It may even end in 2 countries...

It's still quite evident that it is different. The issue that will continue to grow over time is whether the result becomes similar, but without troops on the ground, it's never going to be the same as Afghanistan or Iraq. Wasn't in its design and implementation, and won't be in how it pans out. That doesn't at all preclude the possibility of it turning sour, but a direct parallel cannot be drawn.

 

[kochman]

Unfortunately, it has developed into a civil war. And the vast majority of civil wars are not quick and tend to be measured in years rather than days or weeks.

It was a civil war from the start, and if there was no oil there, we wouldn't be involved. It disgusts me. I thought we put in Obama to do the opposite of Bush, not the same???

I don't think that it is going anywhere, to be honest. I bet that Bammy, Sarko and Co. didn't really expect Qaddafi to be so damn resistant.

Correct.

The Libyans are screwe - what I've been saying all along...

The whole purpose of these interventions into foreign countries is to weaken them, to make their resources easier prey. "Humanitarianism" and "democracy" my ass. The rule is that the population gets screwed whenever foreigners succeed in meddling.

I think this is rather cynical. We already had access to their resources. Qaddafi and the USA made friendly, rather surprisingly, under Bush Jr.


We should not be involved in Libya... nor Iraq... nor Afghanistan. I say this as a former soldier. It is not in our national interest. Afghanistan, the most accepted for some time, was actually the worst... we invaded an entire nation to get one guy!!! UNBELIEVABLE.

 

[Ayn Rand]

War is war - I remember when we went into Iraq and Afghanistan, it was clear to begin with the kind of commitment that would be required. Libya is no different - the problem is not with the strategists, the problem is with people who think war is a game that they can play over a few weekends and that the enemy will cave in at convenient and cost-effective rate.

As for letting Ghaddafi stay in Libya - it will never happen. No way are we going to let him send out a message saying that the West can be resisted. If takes ten years, or longer, then so be it.

 

[Snorrius]

Let's hope Gaddafi will win his war against humanitarian bombers and oppressed mercenaries.

 

[bestrfcplayer]

Let's hope Gaddafi will win his war against humanitarian bombers and oppressed mercenaries.

Wait, why? If anything, Gaddafi is the inhumane one here.

 

[Snorrius]

Wait, why? If anything, Gaddafi is the inhumane one here.

ORLY? He is not bombing Lybia into stone age, he is not funding civil war nor he is paying mercenaries to fight the government. It is NATO who is destroying Lybia, so I am wishing him good luck and hope he will fought as long as it possible against this evil army which destroys one country after another, and maybe even win.